Alan Campbell - God of Clocks

The group assembled beside a glassy basalt outcrop at the edge of the plateau surrounding the Obscura Redunda. A freezing wind shrieked past their ears, while the walls of the castle flickered and throbbed behind them. From up here Rachel could see for leagues in each direction along the Flower Lake's northern shore: peninsulas and crescents of silver beach; the smudge of smoke over Kevin's Jetty; the green wooded hills rising up in banked mounds from the water's edge to the dour Temple Mountains; and, half a league further down the slope below, the arconite Dill.

He was using his one good arm to drag his huge body up through the forested slopes. A clutter of pipes and bones and wire-snagged machine parts scraped along the ground behind his broken pelvis. In his wake he left a trench full of oil and broken trees.

Rachel ran towards the path that would take them back down the mountainside, but Sabor called after her, “You can't help him.”

“I have to help him,” Rachel replied.

“He's too big,” the god of clocks said. “You can't carry him up here, and you can't repair him. He has to make it on his own.”

“He might have to drag himself,” Rachel said, “but that doesn't mean he has to make the journey alone.” She wheeled away and sprinted down the track.

She had barely covered two hundred yards before Iron Head caught up with her. She heard his leather armour creaking, and the thud of his boots behind her, and looked back to find him grinning.

“You gave Sabor a lesson in compassion,” he said.

“I've never met a god who didn't need one,” she replied. “Except for Hasp, and he tried to kill me.”

A yelp came from somewhere behind. Rachel glanced back up to see Mina struggling down the steep trail a short distance away, her glass-sheathed feet slipping in the loose dirt, while her little dog sauntered along beside her. There was no sign of Sabor-apparently he had decided not to come.

They remained on the path for an hour before Rachel heard the arconite's enormous body smashing through the forest. She turned in the direction of the sounds and led her two companions through densely packed trees. All was silent except for the regular crunch of the canopy breaking up ahead, and the rhythmic thud of bone striking earth.

He stopped moving when he saw them. His massive arm collapsed to the ground with one final crash, and his jawless skull simply settled upon the hillside and lay there, staring.

Rachel burst into tears. She scrambled over to his skull and pressed her body against it. The dead bone felt coarse and hard under her hands, utterly cold. The arconite's great skeleton stretched far down the slope below in a mess of twisted metal, pipes, and ribs.

Rachel felt a hand on her shoulder and turned to find Mina standing beside her.

“He can't speak,” she said. “Let's find his soul.”

The narrow passageway leading into Dill's soul chamber had been left exposed by his missing jaw, and they had little trouble finding it and crawling inside. The chamber within remained gloomy, only partially illuminated by dim shafts of daylight falling through holes in the arconite's cranium. In the very center, the glass sphere containing the angel's spirit rested amidst piles of broken machine parts and blue crystal shards.

A hooded figure was slumped on the floor with his back against the sphere, an empty whisky bottle in his hand. He looked up and groaned.

“Hasp!” Mina shouted, rushing towards him.

The Lord of the First Citadel clutched his head in his hands and groaned again. “Stay away from me, thaumaturge,” he said. “I don't know where I am or what I might do. It seems I've been in a battle, but I have no recollection of it.”

“You're hungover,” she said.

“That, too.” Hasp tilted his head back and closed his eyes.

Rachel stepped over debris and placed her palms against the glass sphere. The ghosts inside drifted through each other like dreams, passing in and out of Dill's own spectre. Their voices assaulted her mind:

Too late … too late …It is dying… He should not have fought, and now … Killing us… Too late, the blow from above … withering … Such pain, and dust, and darkness… Leave us alone …

“Dill?”

His voice sounded faint. I was coming to meet you at Sabor's castle.

“It's not far now.”

He was silent a moment. This hill nearly finished me.

“Are you in pain?”

Some.

She pressed her face against the cold glass. “But you got away from them. You made it here.”

I lost the cleaver.

“That doesn't matter.” A tear ran down over the smooth surface of the sphere and broke against her hand. She didn't know what to tell him. They couldn't heal him, and they couldn't take him inside Sabor's castle. If he managed to crawl to the top of the mountain, he would have to remain there while the rest of them went inside.

Mina pressed her hand to the glass an inch in front of Rachel's face. “Do you realize how much of a mess you're in, Dill?” she said. “They've completely destroyed you.”

Mina?

“Mina!” Rachel glowered at her. “Do you have to be so fucking insensitive all the time?”

“Well, just look at him,” the thaumaturge said, “or what's left of him. He's got no legs, one arm, and the rest of him looks like crawling scrap. He's not even going to make it to the Obscura.”

“He'll make it,” Rachel said.

“And then what?” the thaumaturge retorted. “He'll lie outside and rust. There's nothing left of him, Rachel, nothing here we can salvage.”

A crack sounded above them, and a table-sized chunk of Dill's cranium fell down and smashed into a mound of shattered crystal at one side of the chamber. Hasp twitched and clutched his head.

Rachel grabbed Mina by her shoulders and wrenched her away from the sphere. “What are you doing?”

Mina's dark eyes narrowed. She leaned her face forward and whispered in Rachel's ear. “I'm telling it like it is, Rachel. He can't survive like this, and I think he should know that.” She straightened again, smiling coldly. “Use your head, Spine.”

And suddenly Rachel understood. Menoa's warriors had weakened Dill by planting doubts in his mind. This huge bone-and-metal body was only as strong as Dill believed it to be, so the other arconites had made it vulnerable simply by convincing Dill that he was vulnerable. Now Mina was trying to finish the job for them. If they weakened him enough, they might be able to break the sphere and release his soul.

Rachel glared at the other woman. “What happens to his soul if we can free it?”

“Most spirits can survive for a short while on this earth,” she whispered, “and Dill is a lot more powerful than your average phantasm. When he was in Hell, he consumed a fragment of Iril, a piece of Hasp's soul, and…” She smiled. “… a little bit of me.”

“How long could he exist outside this body?”

Mina shrugged. “He's a rather uncommon person,” she said, “even for an angel. Why don't we get him out of here and see what happens?”

“Are you sure about this?”

“No,” Mina replied. “But do it anyway.”

Iron Head swung his hammer at the glass sphere. It connected with a loud crack. He examined the tiny white scratch he'd made on the smooth surface, shook his head, and then hefted the weapon once again. On the second blow the glass shattered.

Thus liberated, the ghosts from the sphere tore around the walls of the chamber in a vortex of vapourous hands and eyes and teeth. Rachel staggered as they howled past her face, grabbing at her, buffeting her, and she heard their cries in her mind.

Not in Hell…freezing… there's life, warmth … look at the glow … so cold… treasures…